institution

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act of instituting.
2. n. A custom, practice, relationship, or behavioral pattern of importance in the life of a community or society: the institutions of marriage and the family.
3. n. Informal One long associated with a specified place, position, or function.
4. n. An established organization or foundation, especially one dedicated to education, public service, or culture.
5. n. The building or buildings housing such an organization.
6. n. A place for the care of persons who are destitute, disabled, or mentally ill.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of instituting or setting up; establishment; effective ordination: as, the institution of laws or government; the institution of an inquiry.
2. n. Establishment in office; in ecclesiastical use, instatement in a spiritual charge; investment with the cure of souls. See installation.
3. n. Establishment in learning; instruction.
4. n. Established rule or order; a principle of procedure in any relation; custom; more specifically, an established habit of action, or body of related facts, regulating human conduct in the attainment of a social end, and constituting an element in the social organization or civilization of a community: as, government, the family, a language, is an institution.
5. n. An established custom or usage, or a characteristic.
6. n. An establishment for the promotion of some object; an organized society or body of persons, usually with a fixed place of assemblage and operation, devoted to a special pursuit or purpose: as, an educational institution; a charitable institution; the Smithsonian Institution at Washington.
7. n. A system of the elements or rules of any art or science; a treatise or text-book.
8. n. Eccles.: The origination of the eucharist, and enactment of its observance, by Christ.
9. n. The words used by Christ in instituting the eucharist, in the various forms as recorded in Scripture (Mat. xxvi. 26–28; Mark xiv. 22–24; Luke xxii. 19, 20; 1 Cor. xi. 23–25), or transmitted by tradition; in liturgics, the part of the prayer of consecration of the eucharistic elements in which these words are repeated. Also called more fully the commemoration, recital, or words of institution. In its fullest form, as exemplified in Oriental liturgies, in the Scotch communion office of 1764, and in the American Prayer-book, the prayer of consecration consists of three principal parts, the institution, oblation, and epiclesis or invocation. In nearly all the older liturgies (except the Roman) the institution seems principally conceived in the character of a recital of Christ's words and actions at the last supper, the great oblation and epiclesis consummating the observance commanded by him; while in the Western liturgies, including the Roman and that of the Church of England, but not the Mozarabic in its original form, nor the Scotch and American offices, the institution, with the manual acts, is regarded as the full and complete act of consecration, and there is no invocation.
10. n. The act by which a bishop commits the cure of souls under himself in a parish within his diocese to a priest as rector or vicar. In the Church of England the presentee must previously have made the declaration of assent, taken the oaths of allegiance and canonical obedience, and made the declaration against simony. Institution is given by the bishop or his commissary reading an instrument, the seal of which the clergyman being instituted holds, kneeling before him. When the bishop is patron of the benefice, the same act becomes collation instead of institution. After institution induction admits to temporal possession of the goods and income attached to the cure of souls. In the American Episcopal Church induction is not separate from institution, and there is a public office of institution, set forth in 1804 as the office of induction and revised in 1808 and 1886. The bishop, if satisfied that a clergymau is a qualified miuister and duly elected, may act as institutor himself or appoint a presbyter to act in his stead. The office consists in reading the letter of institution, presentation by the senior warden or other vestryman of the keys of the church to the new incumbent, his reception within the altar-rails by the institutor, who presents him with the Bible, Prayer-book, and books of canons, and in the use of proper psalms, lessons, anthem, and prayers, after which the instituted minister offers special prayers, and, after a sermon, celebrates the holy communion.

Wiktionary

1. n. An established organisation, especially one dedicated to education, public service, culture or the care of the destitute, poor etc.
2. n. The building which houses such an organisation.
3. n. A custom or practice of a society or community - marriage for example.
4. n. A person long established with a certain place or position.
5. n. The act of instituting.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act or process of instituting; as: (a) Establishment; foundation; enactment.
2. n. Instruction; education.
3. n. The act or ceremony of investing a clergyman with the spiritual part of a benefice, by which the care of souls is committed to his charge.
4. n. That which instituted or established.
5. n. Established order, method, or custom; enactment; ordinance; permanent form of law or polity.
6. n. An established or organized society or corporation; an establishment, especially of a public character, or affecting a community; a foundation; ; also, a building or the buildings occupied or used by such organization.
7. n. Anything forming a characteristic and persistent feature in social or national life or habits.
8. n. That which institutes or instructs; a textbook; a system of elements or rules; an institute.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. an organization founded and united for a specific purpose
2. n. the act of starting something for the first time; introducing something new
3. n. a custom that for a long time has been an important feature of some group or society
4. n. a hospital for mentally incompetent or unbalanced person
5. n. an establishment consisting of a building or complex of buildings where an organization for the promotion of some cause is situated